With increased interest in automating underground operations due to safety and efficiency concerns, the need to develop automatic guided mining vehicles becomes increasingly critical.
Current guidance systems generally either lack the ability to look ahead and/or require on board lighting systems to illuminate a passive reflector. Other systems that incorporate active light emitting sources do not appear to be capable of easily operating in a mine environment. Current systems usually operate on or under smooth surfaces that must accommodate buried wires, lights and other markers.
As opposed to a ceiling in a building, the back (roof) of an underground excavation is generally not horizontally flat. Rather, it may undulate in an irregular fashion. Moreover, the back is loaded with variously sized appurtenances such as pipes, conduits, screens, lamps, etc.
Similarly, whereas the floor of a structure such as a building is generally smooth, the floor of a mine drift may be irregular and bumpy.
In particular, there is a need to guide a vehicle through a repetitive haulage cycle between two points over rough terrain and under an irregular roof surface. Moreover, it has been determined that articulated haulage vehicles are very efficient in such environments.
Clearly, a system for automatically guiding vehicles including scooptrams and the like in a mine is desirable.